New Weird Interview

Rick Kleffel at the Agony Column interviewed Ann and me for a podcast about the New Weird anthology, in addition to doing a write-up. It sounds pretty good, although I should've just read out the definition of NW we have in the introduction (reproduced below the cut). The book comes out in March.This is probably the best antho we've edited and we're very proud of it. We think readers will really enjoy the heck out of it. (Also note this piece on New Weird on the Guardian blog, which is not bad. I considered commenting, but the one thing I have no wish to do is get involved in a NW discussion anything like the original one!)New Weird is a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy, largely by choosing realistic, complex real-world models as the jumping off point for creation of settings that may combine elements of both science fiction and fantasy. New Weird has a visceral, in-the-moment quality that often uses elements of surreal or transgressive horror for its tone, style, and effects--in combination with the stimulus of influence from New Wave writers or their proxies (including also such forebears as Mervyn Peake and the French/English Decadents). New Weird fictions are acutely aware of the modern world, even if in disguise, but not always overtly political. As part of this awareness of the modern world, New Weird relies for its visionary power on a "surrender to the weird" that isn't, for example, hermetically sealed in a haunted house on the moors or in a cave in Antarctica. The "surrender" (or "belief") of the writer can take many forms, some of them even involving the use of postmodern techniques that do not undermine the surface reality of the text.